February 10, 2010
Advanced Skills, Basic Skills, Technical, Tips, Troubleshooting
No Comments
If this is your first time, get hold of a can of compressed air specifically developed for cleaning computers and not from your garage compressor. Canned air is moisture free to avoid contaminating the electronics. Hold the Power supply for a few minutes while you take a look inside to admire the parts (this discharges any static electricity from you) Check all vents for the internal fans along with the one for the power supply. If they are dirty try to blow air through them to remove all dust and debris from all visible parts. If the said computer is visually dusty, you might want to do this outside the house. Also pay close attention to the CPU and blow air onto the fan and heat sink. Once you are satisfied and all visible dust and fido hairs are gone, you can reverse the process and take the camera shots to re-connect all the cables and chords that you took out and boot up. A clean computer runs cooler and more efficiently, besides too much dust on any of the internal components can lead to parts failure due to the insulating properties of dust.
August 17, 2008
Advanced Skills, Antivirus, Basic Skills, Information, Software Updates, Technical, Tips, Troubleshooting
No Comments
Image source: www.it-security-blog.com
Data backup is the act of ensuring your important information (which could be customer contact details for a business or cherished photos for a home user) isn’t only stored in a single place, which leaves it vulnerable to being lost through damage or theft. Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all important data, the risk of total data loss is minimized. And any data loss does not result in a total standstill of the business or heartache for the home user. Using the backup data, the system can be restored and normal service resumed.
Finding the right data backup solution can be confusing. It depends on what to backup, how to backup and what type of computer or network is being used. It might sometimes seem difficult to choose the right backup solution. Not because they are difficult to find, but because there are so many of them.
March 6, 2008
Advanced Skills, Technical, Tips, Troubleshooting
No Comments
One drive systems usually have no jumpers while two or more drive systems can have them installed. Set your errant drive as the slave and the master drive (the new one) as the master drive. Install the drive and screw securely while ensuring all power cables and connectors are set in their proper places before you power up. Partition the new drive if desired and format each partition (this ensures no malicious programs might have been innocently???? left in the drive during testing by the retailer or manufacturer) even if the retailer who sold you the drive says it is factory formatted. Re-install the OS, drivers and all the other programs; re-copy all the necessary files and you’re all set to go. Oh, don’t forget to take out the errant drive after you copy all your documents and files (the drive can fail and damage the computer if the controller board shorts due to failure of the mechanical parts damaging the rest of your computer including the new drive).
If this is your first time, get hold of a can of compressed air specifically developed for cleaning computers and not from your garage compressor. Canned air is moisture free to avoid contaminating the electronics. Hold the Power supply for a few minutes while you take a look inside to admire the parts (this discharges any static electricity from you) Check all vents for the internal fans along with the one for the power supply. If they are dirty try to blow air through them to remove all dust and debris from all visible parts. If the said computer is visually dusty, you might want to do this outside the house. Also pay close attention to the CPU and blow air onto the fan and heat sink. Once you are satisfied and all visible dust and fido hairs are gone, you can reverse the process and take the camera shots to re-connect all the cables and chords that you took out and boot up. A clean computer runs cooler and more efficiently, besides too much dust on any of the internal components can lead to parts failure due to the insulating properties of dust.